ANALYSIS: Miliband victory set to polarize British politics

By Anna Tomforde Sep 26, 2010, 18:19 GMT

   London - It was always clear that, whichever Miliband would win the Labour Party crown, their leadership of Britain's biggest opposition party would shake up politics.

   Now that the moderate David, 45, has been pipped to the post - by the narrowest of margins - by his more radical younger brother, Ed, British politics could be in for a period of turbulence.

   It had been unusually calm since the election in May of David Cameron's Conservative-Liberal coalition, as a demoralized Labour Party was too busy recovering from defeat to offer any meaningful opposition.

   All change now: with unprecedented public spending cuts looming, Ed Miliband has pledged to work 'every hour of every day' to oust the Conservative-led government, even though he admits that it could be a long journey back to government for Labour.

   The Conservatives have branded the new Labour leader as the 'trade union candidate,' as it was backing from the party's powerful trade union block that ensured his 1.3-per cent lead over his brother in the leadership contest.

   But Ed, 40, in his first TV interview since being chosen late Saturday, brushed aside suggestions that he would be at the mercy of the unions.

   In an article for the conservative Sunday Telegraph, he also pledged not to 'squeeze the middle classes.'

   'I am nobody's man, I am my own man. I am very clear about that,' Miliband said on the BBC's Andrew Marr show Sunday.

   'The past is another country as far as I am concerned,' he said, when quizzed about the strong trade union support for him.

   It certainly is. While the trade unions openly hailed Ed Miliband's victory as the 'end of New Labour,' its creator, Tony Blair, is reported to have described Ed Miliband's election as a 'catastrophe.'

   The Conservative Party, and right-wing newspapers, are gleefully rubbing their hands in their belief that Ed Miliband will alienate the middle-class vote while also failing to mobilize the left as the role and popularity of the trade union movement are in decline.

   'The real test for Miliband will come with the spending cuts. If the coalition policies work, he can't win. If they go wrong, there is a massive opportunity for the left in Britain,' said James Forsyth, a writer on the right-wing Spectator magazine.

   Denis Healey, the Labour elder statesmen, however told the BBC in an interview Sunday that he did not anticipate a repeat of the close Labour-trade union alliances that in past decades brought down governments and paralyzed the country with strikes.

   'There is no real left today, and the trade unions are no longer important,' said Healey. He suggested that, instead, Miliband would focus his attention on attracting disenchanted defectors from the Liberal Democrats to the Labour fold.

   Miliband, commentators said Sunday, was far too astute a politician to allow himself to be seen as a captive of the unions. 'He will escape the box the Conservatives are trying to put him in,' said one.

   But as for the relationship with his brother, things could be more difficult.

   'I'm obviously genuinely delighted for him,' David said in his first public comment about his brother's triumph. 'Because, if I can't win, he should lead the Labour Party.'

   But for David, the former foreign secretary, defeat has been bitter - made worse by the fact that he led the field in the first three rounds of counting under Labour's complicated preferential voting system.

   According to the Sunday Mirror, David has been 'crushed' by the experience. The News of the World even suggested that the older Miliband would spearhead an 'exit of Blairites' from the Labour Party.

   However, it is widely assumed that David will, for a while at least, take up a leading role in the shadow cabinet - most likely that of foreign affairs or the treasury.

   But he could, eventually, quit for a job elsewhere - perhaps in the European Union, some commentators have speculated.